Anna Callaghan
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
A quote by Adolf Hitler illustrates the importance of a global community that is receptive to the circumstances and plight of others, standing up if necessary in the name of humanity. Hitler’s self-proclaimed mission was merciless, physical destruction of the enemy. His justification was jarring: “Who, after all,” he said “speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
That statement has been the catalyst behind the decisions I’ve made since I first saw it. I had just returned from an internship in Yerevan, Armenia and was interning in the U.S. Senate. I stood in the final exhibit of the Holocaust museum in D.C. and was struck by the words in bold font on the wall before me.
On a certain level that’s why I’m here at NYU and why I find myself as a Global Fellow. Immersive experiences such as this provide the majority of their benefits after the fact. The juxtaposition of those two cities, Yerevan and D.C. was striking to me mainly because of the parallels rather than the differences. It remains striking to me two years later.
My perceptions changed then and I know they will change again after spending three months in Sarajevo. When I read my first blog posts about Armenia they seem silly and initially I wondered how I could’ve been so wrong. What matters, however, is that by the end I started to figure things out. I won’t pretend to know everything, and I imagine I may later have the same feeling about my first few posts here, but hopefully I can bring those who are not in the Balkans along for the ride.
As a graduate student in international relations and journalism I’ve been able to combine my love of foreign policy with my appreciation for the way writing can make it digestible for the masses. This semester I’ve been working on one beat: Bosnians in New York City. This has proved to be the most valuable preparation for me. I’ve got a lengthy reading list that I’ve been working through, but talking to actual Bosnians is markedly different. Books are great, but you can’t ask a book a question.
That said, I’ve got a million questions. I’ve never studied the Balkans previously and there’s a lot to learn. The conflict saw a developed society collapse completely and it has yet to recover. Why? Two decades after direct conflict and the battle still rages. Why? What does it mean to be a Bosnian these days, what meaning if any does that term carry? Are people tired of the war story narrative that won’t go away? What do the ethnic tensions look like across the country? I could go on.
The conflict in the former Yugoslavia was so severe it created a new verb: Balkanize. It’s still what most people think of when they hear the word ‘Balkans’ today. The war was so heavily covered that those images of bullet holes and destruction are what still populate their memory.
I want to explore what the country looks like today. I’ll be doing that through the lens of human rights and more specifically the notion of freedom of information. This blog will feature journalism, anecdotes, descriptions of the place, photos, research and whatever analysis I feel I can offer on a subject. Stay tuned.